Belief
by TechnoGryffin
Summary: What you believe affects every part of your life. What happens when Callie finds out more about the beliefs that Arizona has?


A/N - So I was reading Faith by pen_co927 and the opposite of her idea hit me. Don't worry I asked her before I tackled this. And I hope I fulfilled her request to explain what she asked to be explained.

Full discloser I am an Atheist. And personally I have always seen Arizona as one as well. The fact it has taken me this long to write this plot surprises me a little bit.

I hope y'all like it. Please leave me a comment to let me know what you thought.

Nerdfightergirl as always you are the yin to my yang. Thank you for being my awesome beta Harry.

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><p>Arizona walked into the hospital chapel, sitting down in one of the last rows. She had just had a hard loss in the OR. A 9 year old was riding his bike when a car swerved to miss a squirrel and hit him instead. After telling the parents, who both looked like they were too young to be parents, she had to find a place that was quiet.<p>

"Some days I'm not sure why I do this." Arizona leaned forward, resting her forehead on the row in front of her. "All the losses and death. All the tiny humans who are never going to go home to their families. All the suffering I can't fix. Some days I don't know why I do this. Why I do any of this."

The losses stayed with her far longer than the wins. The losses were the reasons why she had to take sleeping pills on her off days, why she had to see a shrink once a week, why she still wasn't sure she would have become a parent if she had a choice in the matter. The losses felt like the links in Jacob Marley's chain, each one adding just a little bit more weight, a little bit more to her pain.

Leaning back, she rubbed at her eyes to try to get the tears that she knew would come to hold off for a while. "Remember when I decided this was what I wanted to do? You told me it was going to be really hard and I told you I wanted to do something really hard." She laughed at the 20-something kid who had thought she could fix every tiny human and save every family heartache.

Arizona turned her head when she heard someone enter the chapel. She saw her wife. "Hey." She tried to keep the tears back, not wanting to cry until she was safely home at the end of her shift.

Callie slipped in next to Arizona, her arm wrapping around Arizona's shoulder. "I heard about your case. I'm sorry." She knew that sorry was never enough. She knew tonight she was going to be holding a broken woman and trying to best to put Arizona back together before morning came. "I didn't expect to find you down here talking to God, but I hope it helped."

Arizona's eyes closed as her head rested against Callie's shoulder. "I didn't believe in God and I wasn't talking to Him. I was talking to Tim. Not that I think he can hear me or answer back." She and Callie had never had the faith talk. Not that Arizona needed to be told Callie's thoughts on God. She wore them pretty freely, even if she was a lapsed Catholic.

Callie twisted her head to look at her wife's face. She hadn't taken that option into account for Arizona before. Really, she just assumed everyone believed until she was told otherwise. Her faith had always just been there when she needed it, even during the times when she had to fight with it to reconcile it with whom she became. "You don't believe in God? Since when?"

Arizona felt the hitch in Callie's breathing but wasn't overly surprised by it. She had never really given Callie a reason to believe that she didn't believe. "Since I was a teenager. The funniest part is the reason I stopped believing in God is because I wanted to read the Bible and learn more about my faith. The more I read and the more I learned, the more it sounded more and more made up to me."

Callie ran her fingertips up and down Arizona's arm, trying to figure out how to take all of this in. She really hadn't thought about her wife's faith all that deeply. She had assumed they were on the same page, though she knew what they said about assuming making an ass out of you. "Mark said that when I was in surgery you wanted to say The Lord's Prayer. Why would you do that?" Asking something to try to understand all of this better.

Arizona laughed softly, thinking back to that moment in that gallery. "I don't like feeling helpless or like I don't have any control. I had to do something. Even if it was something that I didn't believe in, I knew you believed in it. And I knew in that moment that if I prayed I would feel like you were standing there with me. And I needed that." Arizona could remember the feeling of saying the words her father had taught her 30 years before in a church on the base where he had been stationed. She remembered the feeling of knowing that if Callie didn't make it she was going to feel like her right arm was cut off and her heart ripped out. "I wasn't really praying to God; I was praying to you. I was praying to you to hear me and to make it."

Callie kissed the top of Arizona's head, holding her a little bit closer. She hadn't thought before that Arizona could have been praying to her to make it. But knowing her wife and whom she was, it made sense to her. "Well it looks like it worked. I am here, healthy and safe. And so is our daughter." She tilted her head to nuzzle Arizona's neck, breathing in the scent that was pure Arizona. "Does this mean you don't want Sofia to be raised Catholic?"

"I am not going to demand you stop believing in God, Calliope. I'm not going to say we can't teach Sofia about your faith. But I do think we need to teach her to question and to think for herself, too. I am not going to boycott Christmas or give you dirty looks for going to Mass. That's not at all my style. Yeah, I might suggest one of my Dawkins' books for you on a day off when you want something to read. But I am not not going to force anything on you, as you haven't forced anything on me." Arizona had been thinking a lot about what they were going to teach Sofia lately. About heaven and hell. About what to tell her when someone died. She knew what she believed, but she also knew what her wife believed.

"Thank you for not demanding that. Because that would be a huge problem." Callie didn't like to be told she wasn't "Catholic enough" and had a feeling being told was "too Catholic" wouldn't go over any better. But then again she wasn't surprised that Arizona kept this part of herself away from her or that Arizona didn't ask for her to give this part of herself. Arizona was a private person, extremely so on some things.

"I know you. I know your background. I know what your faith means to you." Arizona turned her head, kissing Callie softly. She knew that she still had 3 or 4 hours left on her shift but really all she wanted to do right now was go home with the woman next to her.

"I love you, you know that?" Callie knew that in the middle of their shifts, when they could get paged at any moment, wasn't the right time to finish this conversation. There was a lot of things to discuss and a lot of things they needed to go over with this in regards to what they would tell Sofia. But for now it was nice just to have her arm around Arizona's shoulder.

"I happened to know that, yes. I love you, too." Arizona looked at the face that she was happy to wake up to. When they got to wake up next to each other and one wasn't paged in or they weren't working different shifts.

"I did know that." Callie looked down at her pager when it started to beeping. "I have to go give a consult. Still on for dinner tonight?" She stood, holding her hand out to Arizona.

"I think that could be arranged." Arizona took her wife's hand, holding it as they left the small chapel. "You, me, take out pizza and a 6 pack?" She knew that nights like this, when one had a really bad day or one had a really good day that was what was on the menu.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." Callie kissed Arizona before walking one way while Arizona rolled the other.


End file.
